Writing Workshop Lessons

Picking Topics We Know and Care About

For this sheet the student were encouraged to select things they have never written about! They were to circle the story they want to write next. You can see below Lauren plans to write about a butterfly landing on her leg.

A butterfly landing on my leg.

Going to my dads grandparents house. 

My grandmothers birthday. 

Christmas

This student just started writing words all by herself!! She often asks for help when writing words. 

It was Christmas I was excited

First day of gymnastics

My birthday

I love playing with my brother

Nintendo 3 D, Ninjago, 5 Below(a store that all prices are below 5 dollars) and My Mom 

 

 Click Here For The Topics I Care About Sheet

Revisiting Parts to a Page

After having a week off on vacation we read the story

I picked this story because I wanted to return to the theme of parts to a page. When you turn the page in this story it tells you a different part of Maisy's vacation. After reading this story aloud, we had a conversation about all the things Maisy did on vacation. I have a few students struggling with the idea of parts to a page. These students often pick the same topic and tell the same things over and over again. I also have a few students making what I call listing stories. These students list all of their friends in class over and over again. My goal for this lesson was to stress how it's your job as a writer to not repeat things in your story and to tell us the different parts to each page.


 The language of parts to a page come from Maryellen Giacobbe. She has a wonderful book written about writing workshop in a kindergarten class. She came to my school for teacher training many years ago and she is amazing.  She has a very similar style to Katie Wood Ray. Maryellen talked a lot about teaching parts to a page using the book  My Dog Rosie. the little girl is the author of this book and her grandfather is the illustrator.  This story tells the adventure that Rosie has while taking care of her grandfathers dog.This story is out of print but you may have it at your school or  local library.

We have read this story many times and returned to it often.  We read it again today focusing on parts to a page. 

I have a cat loving class, so I used this book too. 

I love how both books are so simple but yet so relateable to young children.

Think About the Words We Are Spelling

I introduced HAVE A GO!   I know when I taught first grade students did this sheet individually. I decided to do this as a large group mini lesson focusing on the common words students are misspelling, especially words that have been taught. I took the misspellings WS(was) and TER(there) from students stories. This was a simple quick lesson.

  We looked at ws for was we talked about how some kids think it ends with a z (s can sound like z) but would it look right to have a word end with a Z???

I told the group that it's missing a letter in the middle.

A child HAD A GO and spelled wis.

She did such a smart thing by putting a vowel because all words have vowels she even had the vowel in the right spot but it's not the right vowel. 

What would look right in between the w and s? Think about what the word was looks like?

Another child came up and wrote was

I plan on doing this more during large group time.